1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and method for automatically detecting and announcing error on booting a motherboard and, more particularly, to a speech device and method that performs automatic error detection for every element on the motherboard and announces the detected error.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the hardware structure of a conventional motherboard for a personal computer. The motherboard comprises a processor 110, a north-bridge 120, a south-bridge 130, an AC97 codec 140, a BIOS 150 and a detection output device 170. The BIOS 150 is connected to the south-bridge 130 via an LPC bus 160. When the motherboard is turned on, the processor 110 executes some diagnostics to decide if elements on the motherboard are functioning correctly. If an element on the motherboard is functioning correctly, the processor 110 sets the corresponding operating parameters for this element; if this element fails the diagnostic, the processor 110 outputs a corresponding code and the detection output device 170 plays a corresponding audio signal or displays a corresponding error message.
The detection output device 170 is used to output a detection result when the motherboard is booting, and whether the detection output device 170 can be working properly or not depends on the processor status at booting procedure. However, the typical motherboard is assembled with different name brands of processors having different clock settings, and so when the processor is malfunctioning or has an incorrect clock setting, the detection output device 170 will not receive an error message from the processor 110. Therefore, the detection output device 170 cannot inform the user of any potential errors.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a device and method for automatically detecting and announcing error on booting a motherboard to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.